The voters of Pierce County used Ranked Choice Voting to elect their County Executive, County Council and other county level officers in 2008. This site discusses the Ranked Choice Voting races in Pierce County as well as other jurisdictions considering RCV around the state of Washington.

Monday, August 06, 2007

Pierce County experiments with Instant Runoff Voting

David Ammons, the AP political writer for the state, writes about our experiment in Pierce County. This article was published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Bellingham Herald, the Olympian and the Tri-City Herald. The article does a nice job of describing the system and the motivation of the various proponents and opponents.

One of the current and past opponents, Representative Sam Hunt (D-Olympia), does not see there is a problem with our current election system. He is quoted as saying IRV is fixing a problem which does not exist. I guess the pick-a-party primary must be popular in Olympia.

Representative Hunt, voters in Pierce County do not like the pick-a-party primary and want to try alternatives. Indeed, the pick-a-party primary is unpopular throughout the state. Instant runoff voting gets us back as close as possible to our beloved blanket primary. Politicians make not like this idea, but voters likely will.